"Histoire du Soldat / Storia di un Soldato" is a live recording of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's 1918 work with Italian text for seven instruments and narrator and it is the second installment in the subscription-based UK/Italian label 19m40s.
The original piece was premiered in Lausanne Switzerland while the composer lived there in exile and was supposed to be travelling through Europe with an ensemble of 7 musicians in a carriage (the origins of live concert touring maybe?) but due to financial constraints and the Spanish flu it was never performed again while the composer was alive. However it became an important piece in his repertoir that was later played around the world and in particular in French (with the original libretto by CHarles-Ferdinand Ramuz) and in Italian.
Esecutori di Metallo Su Carta, is a fresh collaborative new music ensemble based in Italy but open to outside collaborations and personnel. In this version of the ensemble, its original founder Enrico Gabrielli and Sebastiano De Gennaro play the clarinet and percussions respectively and are joined by Japanese first violinist Yoko Morimyo and four other italian musicians, a conductor and narrator Stefano Panzieri.
The premiere of this piece by this group took place at the "Fuck Bloom! Alban Berg!" festival at Bloom Club in Mezzago and was recorded live in an ex-church .
I suppose if you don't speak Italian this might be a less exciting listening experience (unless it is true, as they say, that italian is a very musical language you can enjoy even if you don't speak it...) but the CD booklet comes with a summary of the libretto as well as some background notes on the composer, the ensemble and the composition.
The CD comes in a beautiful packaging and is limited to 200 hand-numbered copies so if you want one you better head over to the label's website and subscribe to one of their four plans to make sure you get their releases.